A day in the life.....

Monday, February 09, 2004

Can I hit him? Can I?

Actually, it wasn't too bad today - he tried to make me look stupid, and ended up making himself look stupid instead.

It started with the boss sending an email around saying she was going to spend a day with the fraud department, seeing what they do, and how they do things, and asking if anyone else would like to go. The Arsehole's reaction was, "Oh, I think just one of us 3 should go, and report back to the other 2, as we have much better things to do with our time, and I will email the boss to that effect."

Now hold your horses mate.

"Actually, I think it's a great idea and it's something I have been meaning to organise for myself for a while now. That reporting back thing never works - the one who goes ends up doing loads more work answering all the questions from the others because they never went and have no real concept of what is going on. Yes, it's a whole day out, but ultimately it is time well spent."

"Well, maybe if we can just go for an hour then, and just get the basics", he replies.

He then proceeds to email the boss saying that he thinks it's not worth all 3 of our team going, and suggest one goes and reports back to the others. Well, thanks, Arsehole, you have just completely ignored what I said.

The boss, give her her due, replies back basically asking what the rest of us think? To which I replied saying that I definitely wanted to go, giving the 'great opportunity, good learning experience' bollocks that he uses in his everyday working life. Play him at his own game >:-)

Then this afternoon, he organises a meeting with us and the boss, to discuss his project. He is all one for meetings, rather than just either doing the work, or looking up from his screen and asking me a question. He has written a 'paper', and very pretty it looks too - company logo all over it and everything. But full of crap. He hasn't really thought out anything, yet has spent days making the thing look pretty. He wanted to use the meeting as an opportunity to show how good he is compared to the other 2 in the team, and all that happened is it gave me a chance to shine.

Don't get me wrong - I wasn't trying to put him down, but if he calls a meeting to discuss his project, then I will discuss his project. And if that means asking him how he got his figures, and how valid they are, and why he hasn't considered things I would consider basic. And the boss was doing much the same thing - so it turned into a discussion really between me and her, with him just taking notes. And, I was really nice considering. The boss was asking some quite difficult questions of him, and it was obvious he had no clue, and I came to his rescue a number of times. I know he wouldn't do it for me.

But what really get's my goat is how patronising he sounds with the "Well, thanks for that Ann, that's really helpful". Reminds me too much of my boss at Amex.

We finished discussing his stuff 10 minutes before the end, so he turned to the boss and said, "As we have 10 minutes left, why don't we find out how" and turns to me "your project is going Ann". My mouth dropped - he was so obviously trying to drop me in it. Luckily I had earlier today organised a meeting tomorrow to go through my project with everyone, and said I could give a brief outline of what I am doing, but as I had nothing prepared I wasn't sure how much people would get out of it.

One other thing the boss said was about our projects - she wants a monthly meeting with us as a team (the Arsehole has been booking weekly meetings with her, and I get the distinct impression she is trying to discourage him), where we can go over what we are doing. She likes to see things on paper, but not to worry about how pretty they look, she's more interested in content. I think he may have missed my smirk.